


Starlight

by sacrificethemtothesquid



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Emotional carnage, F/M, Forbidden Love, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Obsession, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22236511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/sacrificethemtothesquid
Summary: In Sindarin, there is a word:gilith. She, who loves the stars above all else, on the very night of their celebration, is sitting beside a Dwarf called starlight.
Relationships: Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be an everybody lives/nobody dies fix-it but it accidentally turned into a Shakespearean tragedy. I don't want to know what this says about me as a person. 
> 
> I'm working on a fix-it (for the fix-it). When it's done and _everybody actually fucking lives_ , I'll put a link here.  
> UPDATE 1/12/2021: Here it is! Please enjoy [ Sunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28727151/chapters/70435131).
> 
> Endless thanks to [tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas) for her skillful editing and encyclopedic knowledge.

They say time is nothing to the Elves. They who are immortal care nothing for a single breath.

This is not true, if the breath is the last.

****

She’s muscling the last of the captured Dwarves into their cells when the dark-haired one asks, "Aren't you going to search me?"

He's so young he carries a bare shadow of a beard. There's a beat of consternation and then Tauriel realizes his face is arranged in a parody of concerned innocence as he adds, "I could have anything in my trousers." 

"Or nothing," she retorts, and like a key and a keyhole they unexpectedly align. A grin blooms on his face and warmth rushes into her chest. It’s a thrill of something she cannot define, something like the flash of a shooting star, 

“Why does the Dwarf stare at you?” asks Legolas, frowning as she passes him on the walkway out of the dungeons. 

“Who can say?” she returns, but she’s unable to stop an inexplicable smile tugging at her lips. Just to tease her friend, she adds, “He _is_ rather tall for a Dwarf.”

“Taller than some,” he snorts, “but no less ugly.”

Later, when the rest of her kin prepare to raise cups of celebration, she makes one last walk through the winding maze of cells and finds herself back in front of a certain cell door. Its occupant is leaning back against the wall, idly tossing something from palm to palm. “The stone in your hand," she says, more severe than she intends. "What is it?”

“It is a talisman,” the Dwarf says gravely. “A powerful spell lies upon it. If any but a dwarf reads the runes-” he suddenly thrusts the stone toward her- “they will be forever cursed!”

She’s halfway sure he’s lying, but her prejudices against Dwarves run deep and she can’t help the frisson of alarm.

“Or not,” he says quickly, as she steps back. “Depending on whether you believe that sort of thing.” He coughs. “It’s just a token.”

The key and the keyhole. 

The words go on in a nervous rush. “My mother gave it to me to remember my promise.”

“What promise?”

“That I would come back to her.” He slips into a languid confidence, his head lolling back against the wall with casual ease. “She thinks I’m reckless.”

He’s teasing, fishing for any excuse to further the conversation. She arches an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Nah.” He flips the rune stone up in the air, but instead of returning to his broad palm, it skips through the bars. She catches it with her foot and he’s immediately at the door, a vulnerable, fierce anxiety crashing across his face.

There’s a beat of silence as she picks it up. The stone is warm from his touch with a pleasing weight in her hand. She tilts it up to the light, the runes catching shadow against the iridescence, striations like high clouds under a winter moon.

Beyond the stairs, the echoes of revelry bounce down the halls and he glances up. “Sounds like you’re having quite the party up there.”

“It is the Feast of Starlight.” She will join them later to fall into the warmth of kin and drink. She meant to make a last round to check on her prisoners, but somehow she’s still here with this Dwarf, snared by some essential force. “All light is sacred to the Eldar, but Woodelves love best the light of the stars.”

“I always thought it is a cold light,” he says thoughtfully, “remote and far away.” She would expect such a statement to be a Dwarven rebuke, a haughty dismissal, but there’s a gentle softness instead, a quiet wonder. 

Still, a bubble of indignation rises. “It is _memory_ ,” she says, “precious and pure.” She offers the stone back and the fingers that accept it are as warm as his eyes. “Like your promise.”

The anxiety leaves his body in a visible slump. There’s no subtlety here, no hidden scheme. What she’s seeing is everything he is, and it’s as powerful as a cool night breeze. Something compels her to continue. “I have walked there sometimes,” she whispers, lest any of her kin hear. She’s the one entrusted to maintain the borders; of all people, she knows better than to stray. “Beyond the forest and up into the night. I have seen the world fall away and the white light of forever fill the air.”

His eyes are hazel brown. She’s been told Dwarves are ambitious and greedy, but the only greed she sees is the way he drinks in her words. He describes the fire moon and says wistfully, “I wish I could show it to you,” as if she weren’t the captor and he the prisoner. He speaks only as if they were old friends, comfortable and warm. 

No, she thinks. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, but oh, she never wants it to end.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Tauriel.”

“I’m Kili.”

In Sindarin, there is a word: _gilith_. She, who loves the stars above all else, on the very night of their celebration, is sitting beside a Dwarf called starlight. 

****

Tauriel means to go back to the festival. Dorwinion wine flows like a midnight stream, dark and sweet and heady. She’s spent so many days patrolling the forest and so many nights washing spider ichor from her hair that she’s only caught the barest glint of the sky beneath the weighty canopy. Before tonight, she was looking forward to soft bread and warm friends, to candlelight and the easy, joyful lilt of music. 

All of that is suddenly eclipsed. She finds herself sitting on the step beside the cell, her head bent against the bars toward his, warmth like a sunrise glowing in her chest. 

“There was a comet,” she says. “A smear of light like milk across the sky. It was as if a star wore a silver cloak.”

“I saw something like that once,” he breathes, his eyes gone distant as he excavates the memory. “I was very young. My uncle took Fili and me to stand at the top of a hill - I think we were in Ithilien then. I couldn’t sleep that night. I just lay there and watched it until the sun came up.” He looks over at her. “I’d forgotten about that until just now.”

A kindred spirit. Despite herself, she smiles.

****

The days stretch out. The Dwarves growl and threaten and cajole and stamp their feet, but Thranduil’s will is indomitable. “They will submit or rot,” he says, waving a hand to dismiss her. “We are patient.”

Something is building at Dol Guldur. It feels like every path in Mirkwood is blocked by spider webbing no matter how many of the creatures fall to her arrows. Two hunting parties fail to return and both times her patrol finds their corpses drained. Thranduil receives the news with frigid displeasure; he seems to think her repeated pleas to take a patrol beyond the forest border are nothing more than an admission of failure. 

The weather has become unseasonably cold and damp, the stars themselves wrapped in skeins of brooding cloud. She’s a daughter of the forest, strong and steady as the trees, but even a beech will bend in the wind. She finds herself growing short with her guard, snapping where she would normally be firm. 

Only twice does Tauriel allow herself a forbidden respite. If she crouches on the lowest stair, tucked against the cell door, she’s beyond sight of anyone but the topmost walkway. Kili’s face brightens immediately at her approach and he folds himself into the same conspiratorial position. 

“I never see you disheveled,” Kili laughs, and whatever wretchedness she feels lifts away. 

She likes him. Perhaps it’s the hardship of his situation, or her exhaustion, or the dappled hazel of his eyes, but she can’t make herself stay away. Few Dwarves have ever crossed into Mirkwood during her bare handful of centuries and the more furtive journeys she makes to the dungeons, the more and more the grim recountings of past wars seem like the lofty tales of the Valar, distant and pale. Kili is warm and vibrant, a thrill of energy and light in a place that lately has felt far too stifling.

He asks about the sunrise and she whispers to him about the rain and the clouds, the brief flicker of moonlight she’d seen through the dense crown of silk-bound foliage. Someday, Thranduil will relent and Kili will go, but for now, she holds his smile close to her chest. 

When the days are dark, he is her starlight.

**** 

When she comes back from an early-morning patrol, Tauriel finds her guard in an uproar. Somehow, the thirteen Dwarves she’d seen safely locked up only hours ago have become thirteen empty cells. 

Gone. 

Swallowing back a reeling sense of betrayal, she furiously calls for an exhaustive search and arrives in the wine cellars just in time to see the barrel hatch lazily swing closed. The gross incompetence on the part of her subordinates and the audacity of the escape are _stunning_.

“Follow them,” Legolas says tightly. “I’ll muster the others.”

Tauriel is the captain of the guard. She knows the paths of Mirkwood as well as she knows the engraving on her bow. She can stand as quietly as a copse and match her breath to the rush of wind. She can find a spider amid a whisper of leaves and she can hit its eye before it has time to twitch. The Dwarves were given to her charge; she is honor-bound to retrieve them. 

The horn warning the guards at the river-gate echoes in the rosy sunrise as she sprints down the path. She dances down the last stone flight, half-dreading the commotion at the gate and wishing without hope the Dwarves will let themselves be retaken without violence.

Her first immediate thought is _Orcs_?

There are Orcs, coming over the walls like a swarm of foul bees. How they managed to slip into Mirkwood is something to be settled later, much the same as the matter of the empty cells, but now is not the time and she puts an arrow in the neck of the easiest target, knocking it over the edge of the gate wall and into the rapids below. The Dwarves bristle beneath the bridge, bobbing in their stolen barrels. 

Clever escape; despite herself, she’s impressed. She fires another arrow, this time sending an Orc tumbling down from the bridge. 

She nocks another arrow and-

Kili. He’s suddenly on the bridge above the gate, swinging a purloined sword. 

Her mouth goes dry. He’s soaked: his heavy homespun cotton tunic clings to his broad shoulders and chest, leather trousers sweeping down over thick thighs and calves. The curve of his spine follows the arc of his sword, immense strength, grace and power in a single fluid movement.

He is utterly unlike anything she’s ever seen, and for one long, breathless moment, she’s transfixed. 

Then an arrow sprouts from his thigh, a huge cruel thing sent from an even bigger, crueler Orc, and her heart goes still. 

_Starlight_ , Tauriel thinks wildly. _Get up. Please. Don’t let them take you_. 

She sends one arrow at the big Orc, knowing it won’t be a killing blow but desperate to draw his attention. It’s too much to hope that Kili seeks out her gaze but when he _does_ , lightning snaps inside her chest and she throws herself into the fray. On the other bank, Legolas appears with his own scouts, immediately bolstering the overwhelmed river guard. 

There are so many Orcs. Where did they come from, and why? 

Keeping Kili in her peripheral, she focuses on the Orcs coming over the ramparts. These walls serve only as a watchtower; they were never meant to keep out an invading force. 

_Get up._

He heaves himself to his feet and falls bodily on the gate lever. She can’t swallow back a surge of relief as the metal gate swings open with a groan, but then he tumbles over the edge of the bridge. For one harrowing moment she thinks he’s fallen to drown in the rapids but then the barrel surfaces, his knuckles white from the strain.

His kin help him and then he’s borne away by the rush. 

The lives of Dwarves are as brief as Elves’ are infinite. He will be gone in the blink of an eye. Distantly, she wonders if she will recognize his star. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tauriel can’t exterminate the spiders in Dol Guldur so she turns instead to the Orcs, spinning and slashing, her heart thrilling to the welcome violence. It’s a dance she loves above all others, the hiss of her blades and thrum of her bowstring forming a sweeter melody than any song ever sung in great Elven halls. 

Her joy is broken too soon.

“Not thirteen, not anymore,” the captured Orc rasps with great satisfaction, grinning through black ichor at Thranduil’s feet. “The young one - the black-haired archer. We stuck him with a morgul shaft. The poison’s in his blood. He’ll be choking on it soon.”

Heat flashes through Tauriel’s body and her blades, as integral as her own bones, flick out on their own accord. 

“Enough!” Thranduil’s voice cracks like a whip, spark-bright and and unforgiving. “Tauriel, leave.”

As she stalks away, she hears Thranduil say to the abomination, “I do not care about one dead Dwarf. Answer the question.”

 _Starlight_.

An Orc. Thranduil is offering sanctuary to an _Orc_. Thranduil, who is adamant about his closed borders, is offering sanctuary to one of Morgoth’s most perverted children. For six hundred years, Tauriel has been tasked with keeping the agents of darkness at bay, and now-

Fury rises like bile, hot and sour. Thranduil told her to leave. He did not tell her to stand down. Her king may pardon one Orc for its paltry information, but Tauriel will do what she has always done and hunt the others. 

****

Orcs have no talent for subtlety. Beyond the carnage at the river gate, the banks are heavily trodden, sloppy arrows embedded in trees and shattered on rocks. Tauriel follows the carnage with her heart in her throat: every sliver of wood could be mean a barrel dashed to splinters, every floating body a dark-haired Dwarf.

She finds nothing. She’s not sure which is worse. 

The Orcs are moving at an incredible speed. She’s almost frightened by their pace. Their passing has crushed brambles and dislodged any obstacles in their path. She jogs behind them, all senses alert and straining. The weather is mercifully clear, if not chilly in the shadows. 

Eventually, the river yawns and stretches into the wide, green flow that takes it to the lake. A dismembered deer and its entrails stain the heaving granite underfoot, pools of blood and water ringed with gleeful footprints. Much of the meat is uneaten and buzzing with flies. The kill looks done in sport and she feels a twist of revulsion.

She’s so lost in carnage and worry that she doesn’t hear the soft crunch of gravel until it’s far too close.

In the centuries she’s known him, Legolas has never disappointed her. He’s never been content to sit at the foot of Thranduil’s throne and listen to his father dispense wisdom. Instead, he prefers walking beneath the dense canopy of Mirkwood’s trees and he knows its secrets better than anyone can. When Tauriel came into Thranduil’s sanctuary, Legolas accepted her in the same way he embraced the forest. Decades passed before she was able to trust him in return, but he’s become as close as family.

He’s also sooner than she’d guessed he’d be. 

He’s swift and light on his feet, but she’s always been a contender in skill, and they have their bows drawn at each other in half a breath. 

“I thought you were an Orc,” she snaps, embarrassed at having been caught off-guard. 

“If I were an Orc, you’re be dead,” he retorts. He relaxes his bow and skips around the gore. “Tauriel, you cannot hunt thirty Orcs on your own.”

“I’m not on my own,” she counters.

“You _knew_ I would come.” He sighs. “The king is angry, Tauriel. For six hundred years, he’s protected you. Favored you.” His tone becomes sharp. “You defied his orders. You betrayed his trust.”

Long centuries go both ways. She’d known Thranduil would give the orders to close the gate She’d known he’d gather his people around him and go to ground like a stubborn badger, just as surely as she’d known Legolas would follow her. She can’t feign ignorance. She can only breathe through her nose and try to keep her face still and calm. 

“Come back with me,” Legolas says, softening. “He will forgive you.”

“But _I_ will not!” The anger surges forward, and when she tries to bite it back, it rushes out despite her teeth. “If I go back, I will not forgive _mysel_.” She swings her arm at the placid river. “The king has _never_ let Orc filth roam our lands, yet he would let this Orc pack cross our borders and steal our prisoners?”

“It is not our fight-”

“It _is_ our fight!” she snaps, and Legolas rocks back a step. “It will not end here. With every victory, this evil will grow. If your father has his way, we will do _nothing_. We will hide behind our walls-” the first pricks of hot tears, sharp little betrayals- “live our lives away from the light and let darkness descend.”

Legolas frowns.

“Are we not part of this world?” she entreats. “Tell me, _mellon_ \- when did we let evil become stronger than us?”

He falters. She knows he chafes against his father, but he’s still a prince and he knows where his loyalties must lie. Tauriel disobeyed Thranduil, but Legolas also disobeyed when he came to find her. He knows his father’s wrath and he still risked it. 

“Please tell me you did not aid their escape,” he finally says, and suddenly, they’re no longer talking about the Orcs. 

A denial rises to her tongue, but it feels like a lie. The Dwarves’ flight was impeded by the Orcs. Tauriel fought the Orcs. There were plenty of Orcs doing injury to her soldiers, and yet when she’d seen the big one and his bow, she didn’t hesitate. She can’t for an instant pretend she’d had another motive. 

_The young one. The black-haired archer._

Kili had looked right at her, his eyes burning, and then been lost in the churning foam.

“People will ask. My father will ask,” Legolas says. “Tauriel, I know you favored one-”

_The poison’s already in his blood. He’ll be choking on it soon._

She wants to scream. She wants to yell, to rant, to howl into the forest until her voice cracks against every hollow and hill. There’s too much impotent pressure in her chest, the white burn of tears, every hurricane and storm bound into a wild, racing pulse. She will kill those trying to kill him, the mother’s reckless son, the carrier of a promise, the warm palm and easy humor.

“Tauriel,” Legolas says gently. 

“Starlight,” she says, the word as watery as the current below them. “His name is Starlight.” 

****

Tauriel has no intention of returning to Thranduil, not when the fury is still high in her blood. Let Legolas follow, if he will. 

He does without hesitation.

The afternoon closes in damp and dark as they collect themselves and make their way down the trail. The fog collects on their clothes, a chill harbinger of a long, early winter. 

She finds the first barrel by accident. It’s tucked into a rocky hollow, wooden staves splintered and hoops bent from its violent passage. “There,” she breathes, the word condensing in the air. 

They do a thorough search, but the only others are barely more than wet kindling. The detritus isn’t enough to account for thirteen Dwarves - _not thirteen, not anymore_ \- but beneath the heavy reek of the Orcs, she smells the bright tang of fresh blood. With growing dread, she casts about for a body, but finds only a small rag, barely more than a sodden bandage. 

Despite herself, she puts one fist to her mouth and draws a long, shuddering breath.

“This was no fight,” Legolas says, coming up beside her. “The Orcs came long after.” 

“Where _are_ they?”

There’s a small dock set in a natural bay a few hundred feet downstream, the wild torrent of the upper river gone calm and placid on its journey west. No boats are moored and there’s a great cluster of Orc footprints. 

Legolas examines the mooring. “The rope was taken in, not cut,” he announces. “If they pushed off, it was not under duress.”

“There was a full complement of empty barrels in the cellar,” she says. “A bargeman would have been expecting them.”

One corner of his mouth twitches. “He would not have been expecting them to be full of Dwarves.”

It’s moments like this that remind her how fond she is of Legolas. He is devoted to his father, but opposite in every way: where Thranduil can be charitably described as aloof, his son is given to moments of warmth and playfulness. 

A kind and loyal friend. That’s how she knew he’d follow. 

“Do you think they set out for Lake-town?” Legolas asks. 

The Dwarves had talked constantly about Durin’s Day, a date tossed between their cells with desperate hope. She doesn’t know the day according to Elven reckoning, only that it’s fast-approaching. “They must have. They were heading to the mountain, but they carried no supplies and a bargeman wouldn’t be equipped for such a journey.”

Less than a day ago, she’d leaned against the cell door and listened to a hushed story about a shower of stars. Time passes quickly for Elves, but a single morning seems centuries past. 

“Lake-town is almost a day down the river.”

“Less,” she says, “with the recent rain.” She’s fit and fast, but even she can’t sprint beyond the pace of the river. The knot in her throat eases a fraction. If she can’t keep up with them, the Orcs certainly can’t either. 

Legolas squints downstream, peering into the gloom. “Do you have a plan?” 

She doesn’t know what she’d expected. Her heart had been so full of vengeance that she’d left with only her bow and her anger. As if reading her mind, Legolas snorts and hands over something small: a loaf of lembas, wrapped in a silver leaf. 

“You knew I’d follow,” he says, arching an eyebrow, “and I knew you’d forget.”

It’s an embarrassing oversight, but she’s grateful. She hadn’t realized she’s starving and the mouthful of lembas is like the sweetest nectar.

“It will be easier to track in the morning,” he goes on with a frown. “This fog will have brought the Orcs to a standstill.”

 _He’ll be choking on it soon._

She must make some small noise in her throat because he glances over and gives a nod. “Lucky for us, we are not Orcs.”

****

They run as only Elves can, through the night and into the next day. Just past dusk, they round a bend and the lake suddenly swallows the horizon. Mist hangs at its surface, the tips of Lake-town’s tallest buildings rising in the distance like a long-forgotten castle. 

She’s come this way only a few times, and even then never strayed farther than the edge of the forest. Heading down to the shore feels wild and forbidden, something both exciting and terrifying. 

When she thinks of Kili, she feels the same way. 

_He’ll be choking on it soon._ For a brief moment, she closes her eyes and breathes in the damp estuary air. She has no idea what “soon” means, if it’s an hour, a day, a year. 

There’s a small, rational part of her that reminds her the time may have already passed, but when she probes at it, the wave of panic is as fierce as it is unexpected. 

_Starlight_. 

He isn’t hers to want. He isn’t hers to even consider, but the memory of his warm eyes and the way his wet tunic embraced the broad curve of his shoulders leaves her inexplicably restless. 

Forcefully, she brings herself back to her surroundings. This is the foot of the bridge to Lake-town, a rickety wooden construction almost a mile in length. A dour collection of meager huts ring the shore, but where there should be traders and fisherfolk, only silence lingers. 

“I have a bad feeling,” Legolas says. 

He isn’t wrong, and her stomach sinks as they survey the damage. The Orc pack came through and overwhelmed the settlement so quickly there was no time to mount a defense. A few corpses fell with weapons in their hands, but most died unarmed. The Orcs ransacked supplies; what they didn’t take is strewn on the ground and trodden to ruin. 

“They didn’t take the boats.” The dinghies are upset, hulls bashed in with their own keels. The moon is high in the sky, filtered by scudding clouds, and the faded red paint could easily be mistaken for blood. 

After decimating the fishing village, the Orcs made a point to dismember a beaver pulled from a dam in the nearby rushes. It’s a gruesome sight. 

“Why do they chase the Dwarves so?” Legolas asks. 

Perhaps they, too, want a share of Erebor’s fabled treasure, although she’s never heard of an Orc with a passion for gold. “I do not know.”

The Orc tracks lead straight to the bridge, the long umbilical that allows Lake-town to exist so far from shore. Tauriel’s never had reason to cross the distance, and as they stand at its foot in the gathering dark, she steels herself against a sudden wave of apprehension. 

“You fear the water?” Legolas teases. 

“Only what lies beyond,” she retorts. All day, her pulse has been a steady drumbeat in her ears, a constant reminder that Kili may already be dead. She has no claim on him, beyond what her king demands. He was a prisoner with a smile. He entertained her because he hoped to gain clemency. Whatever joy she found in his company is misplaced. What will she do if - _when_ \- she finds him? What can she say?

She tells herself sternly that seeing him alive will be enough. 

But oh, his name is Starlight.


	3. Chapter 3

The bridge is abandoned. The moon is full, the fog below luminous and thick. She’s always imagined this must be what it feels like to be comfortably tucked inside a star. She has no desire to leave the dappled sunlight and warm moss of her home, but some nights, she closes her eyes and tries to picture Valinor, the distant island of myth and song. Every time, she sees it wreathed in stars, a cloud as thick as this mist, infinite pinpricks of perfect silver. 

_Starlight_. 

Kili, _gilith_ \- it’s a coincidence of syllables. His name means something else to his people. She’s grasping at substance where there is none. Just because she’s Elven doesn’t mean she’s immune to cold and fatigue and distress; she’s been running for two days without respite and she _knows_ there is only disappointment to be found at the other end of this bridge. Still, she can’t shake irrational hope. 

These are prisoners that escaped from her care. If nothing else, she should bring them back and rectify an egregious lapse in judgement from her keymaster. She was furious until Thranduil offered sanctuary to an Orc - an _Orc_ \- and in that moment, all shame evaporated. Her prisoners escaped, but Thranduil _willingly_ made treaty with the enemy. He has lost any moral high ground. 

She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. 

Even though she and Legolas are fleet and light-footed, the weathered timbers still mutter at their passage. They find three Lake-town guards dead along the way, a fourth decapitated and half-submerged in the icy water. There’s no question as to where the Orcs have gone. 

Legolas nudges one of the bodies with his toe. Tauriel doesn’t need to know anything about the development of Men to know that this one is far, far too young, and something wild and awful rises up in her throat.

“This!” She stabs a finger at the dead, at the last moment choking back the words to a hiss. “ _This_ is what your father would have roaming our lands.”

“I know,” he says grimly.

“He let them _go_ , Legolas. Were we not given to this world to be its stewards?”

“I know.”

“He would have us hidden away as if we were Dwarves ourselves, locking ourselves in stone where not even a _breath_ of outside light-”

“Tauriel.” Legolas reaches over to catch one of her hands. “I _know_. Why do you think I came?”

“If he would have us abandon this world, perhaps he should make the journey west,” she says bitterly. “At least there, he would have good company.”

He gives her fingers a quick squeeze, and the rare contact brings her back to herself with a start. “We will make this right, _mellon-nin_.”

Her heart aches. “I am glad you are here.”

Legolas releases her hand, readying his bow. “I have made poor choices,” he says. “This is not one of them.”

****

The two Elves enter Laketown silently, easily scaling up to the roof of the closest building. The city sleeps, the few wandering watchmen slow and unaware. The whole scene feels like a child’s quaint, sweetly ignorant little tableau. Tauriel almost pities it.

“There,” Legolas hisses. 

In the near distance, black shadows creep across the wood-shingled peaks. She and Legolas share a brief, determined look and leap forward. 

By the time they’re close, the Orcs have converged on a single house, rending roof shingles to the shriek of a child within. Whatever sleepy peace held the city has been ruthelessly shattered. “Go,” Legolas says tightly. “I’ll get the ones on the roof.”

She’s already moving. At the threshold, she thrusts her knife into an Orc balanced on the railing and without hesitation follows the momentum her forward. The room is pandemonium. Somewhere in the haze of flour and splintering wood and the terrified screaming of the children, she counts five Orcs and lunges into the fray.

She fells the first with a quick slash to the throat and whirls to sink her blade into another’s chest. The third is scrabbling at an upturned table, trying to get at the girls below, and Tauriel slits her other dagger between his vertebrae and gives a wicked twist. 

In her periphery, Legolas drops down through the roof and throws himself at the Orc near the door. There are too many bodies in too small a space, but she was raised in the dense forest of Mirkwood where trees are sometimes only a handsbreath apart. She trusts her daggers to go where they’re needed and lets herself be pulled along behind. Two Dwarves, unarmed but not helpless. They surround the children, rearing back with improvised weapons when they can. 

In the corner of the room, she sees a blur of familiar blue, the color she’s been aching to find, and her heart thrills at the discovery. Once, when he was just a stranger with the face of a hated enemy, covered in spider silk, Kili had pleaded with her to throw him a blade. Now she does so without hesitation and his strike is strong and true.

She doesn’t even have time to be jubilant. He's in pain. When he howls, it's inhuman, feral, horrifying, but somehow he’s still found her dagger and followed it to its end. As the Orc falls, so does Kili, and in less than a heartbeat, he hits the floor, his body contorted at her boots. 

Distantly, she thinks she might throw up. 

She's the captain of the guard, a leader, a soldier. Thranduil once called her his golden-eyed assassin. If she keeps moving, it’s unconscious, a dance she’s perfected through centuries of practice. She swings at the Orcs, slicing through fetid flesh, her limbs acting of their own accord, and instead she looks at him. 

In that first moment, she thinks he’s been struck. In the heartbeat after, she realizes no, he’s just dying. 

_He’ll be choking on it soon_.

He’s choking right now. 

Abruptly, the battle is over. He's sobbing incoherently on the floor, spittle and blood caught in webs at his lips, his kin throwing themselves down beside him. 

"Tauriel," Legolas says, and that one word conveys volumes. He needs her by his side - this is her quest, the one for which they both disobeyed the king - but... 

_I will not forgive myself._

There’s anger in his eyes, frustration, the lust for enemy blood. There’s also sympathy. He knows her. He’s giving her permission for a decision she hasn’t yet made. 

“We’re losing him!” the older Dwarf says tightly.

If Kili were Elven, in that moment of such pain, his _fëa_ would have departed for the undying lands. She would have welcomed it, the escape of temporary suffering back into ephemeral immortality. Her grief would have been mediated by the knowledge she might someday see it again in another form.

Mortals lack that choice. She wants him to stay - she knew that, but she didn’t know _how much_ until right now. Tauriel is no great healer, and even if she were, she knows a death when she sees one. The mother’s reckless son is dying, his promise to return breaking with Tauriel as its horrified witness.

A family sundered. It’s a thing she knows far too well and feels far too keenly. 

She rips herself away, breathing in to let it fuel her rage. She can do nothing for him. She can’t even watch. Her cowardice is excruciating. She takes her daggers to hand and is one step into the chill night when she almost trips over the Dwarf charging up the creaky wooden stairs. 

She’s half a heartbeat from slicing his head from his shoulders when the smell arrests her mid-stride: herbal and green, fresh as spring grass, bright with purpose.

Athelas. 

_Athelas._

The Dwarf with the curled hat is clutching a small bundle of athelas, tiny white flowers like stars glowing amid rich, dark foliage. She feels like she’s been dropped off the edge of the balcony, her body weightless, flung somewhere far beyond herself. 

Athelas. Here in her hands is fresh, green athelas. It isn’t real - it cannot be - this is a dream, or a nightmare-

“What are you doing?” asks the Dwarf, a tremble of disbelief in his voice. 

The words come out before she realizes she’s saying them. “I’m going to save him.”

****

Tauriel has never felt relief so great or inadequacy so keen. She has done small healings - speeding the staunching of blood, relieving what pain as can be commanded - but these have all been rare moments and she'd been praised as exceptional for her success. This is different. As an Elf, she understands the flow of the world, but she’s never tried to direct its course this way. Hands shaking, she stripped the athelas away from its stems, squeezing handfuls in cold lake water until it makes a thick, leafy paste.

Kili’s kin lift him onto the table, screaming and bucking in their arms, dishes and bowls flying away from his spasms. A dark stain of urine spreads across his trousers. “Hold him still,” she commands, the athelas damp and tingling against her skin. 

He’s so strong it takes every one of them.

All her life, Tauriel has been told she’s impulsive. It’s served her well and she’s so caught up in the rawness of Kili’s scream that she doesn’t stop to consider if this is even possible. 

The wound is pustulent and dark, lines of shadow reaching out like greedy, malevolent fingers. The feeble little healings she’s done before have been simple, straightforward, a nudging closed of flesh on flesh. This is ugly, this is _wrong_ , a sensation like the screech of steel on stone slicing deep into her marrow. 

Kili falters beneath her hands, choking on a white froth. This terrified, seizing creature - this isn’t him. He’s a child of stone, a ready smile, a wink and a grin and a wisecrack. For three short days - not even a handful of hours - he was hers and she was his. The key and the keyhole, the sudden release of a lock she didn’t know bound her-

He’s slipping away.

Suddenly, the words crystallize in her mind: she will not let his mother know the pain of losing a child. She will not let his brother be haunted by the sound of death. Everything that has been taken from her, everything dear that has been brutally amputated- 

She knows the howl of grief. She knows the crushing weight of loss. She’s been told that her survival is a gift, a blessing amid the memories of smoke and ash. She will not let his loved ones suffer as she has. 

She closes her eyes and lets her consciousness sink into the calm purpose of the athelas and its ready acceptance of her intent. “Send the blessing that was given to me from me to him,” she says fiercely, willing it to be true. “Release him from death.”

This thing, this darkness - it holds him captive as fast as any chain or cage. It twists beneath her hands, a force almost laughing at her attempt. She pushes against it, envisioning the athelas as a beacon of safety, a light in the fog. 

Tauriel can feel herself failing. She isn’t enough-

Fury surges forward. She _is_ enough. She has to be. Is she not the one who named him Starlight? Is she not the one who held the runestone, warm in her hand? Has she not defied the orders of her king? 

She has gone beyond the boundaries of Mirkwood to gaze up at the night sky. Now, she’s gone even farther.

Remember his smile. Remember the warmth of the runestone in her palm. _Send the blessing that was given to me to him_. Remember the hazel of his eyes. Remember that first moment of heat. Remember the curve of his calves. _Release him from death._

It isn’t a prayer. It’s a demand. She couldn’t save her parents, but she can save Kili. _Send the blessing that was given to me to him_ She pictures cleansing light like a sunrise coursing from her hands, everything that is green and good in the athelas flooding into the black. _Release him from death_. White crystals in frigid winter. A hearth on a frozen night. The heavy freshness that comes after a hard rain. _Send the blessing that was given to me to him_. The purity of a son’s promise. His hair, chestnut and dark. _Release him from death_. 

In this moment, Tauriel claims him. Through the athelas, she makes herself wild and bright, taking whatever darkness binds him and making him her own. She blazes with power and clarity, incandescent. _Send the blessing that was given to me to him._ She is a meteorite. She is phosphor. _Release him from death_. 

The shadow flares, a last death-rattle of shivering dark. She bears down upon it, a living firestorm of golden fury. Kili glows with her, brighter and more beautiful than any star, and like an imploding egg, the poison is suddenly gone. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Fate has blessed Tauriel. Somehow, desperation overcame lack of skill and in the early dark of the morning, his breathing slows and color starts to slowly bleed back into his shadowed face. Her hands are athelas-fresh and tingling, her heart steady and calm. 

Her work isn’t done. The blood that seeps is red, fresh and untainted, but the flesh remains torn. This part is familiar; she gently applies the last of the athelas paste and winds a length of clean bandage around his leg. 

“Tauriel.” It’s barely more than an exhale of breath.

“Lie still,” she says gently.

“You cannot be her,” Kili continues, as if to himself. “She is far away. She...” It sounds like a prayer, a benediction, a soulful yearning to return to a barely-remembered vision. “She is far, far away from me...” He smiles a little, softly confiding a tender secret. “She walks in starlight in another world.” 

_I am right here_ , she wants to say, but his face crumples to grief. “It was just a dream.”

Her breath catches as she feels the ghost of his fingertips on hers. 

Finally, he finds her eyes, the stranger, the not-Tauriel here at his side. His voice is almost plaintive. “...do you think she could have loved me?”

 _Yes_ . But the words are stuck in her throat. _Yes, I do._

****

Kili sleeps. Tauriel busies herself with the menial task of cleaning, of dragging the orc bodies out to drop into the black water below and patching the damaged roof as best she can. 

As she reaches for a length of timber, a second pair of arms suddenly helps bear its weight. “Thank you,” the brother, the one called Fili, says hoarsely. “Please, if we can ever repay you...anything you want, it’s yours.”

“Payment isn’t needed,” she says, a lump rising to her throat. “I did what I could.”

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

There is nothing she can want that she hasn’t already been given. She wanted life for him, and now he’s boneless and without pain in a deep, healing sleep. She wanted death to spare him and somehow it has. 

She can’t let herself name anything more, and even if she could, what she wants isn’t something to be given.

He is _starlight_. She’s seen it. She’s always heard the name of the Dwarves pronounced in the same tone as the Orcs, distasteful and perverted, but nothing evil could claim the sweetness of his smile. He may be mortal and ephemeral, but his essence and hers are the same. 

Starlight. Oh, beautiful starlight. 

The children have finally fallen asleep, curled tightly together in a corner of the kitchen like mice in a nest, the blankets around them soiled with Orc blood. “Come, lad,” Oin says to Fili. “Best get some rest. I’ll keep watch.”

“No,” Tauriel says. “Please, both of you. I can watch over him.”

Fili’s face is tight with fatigue and worry. Even through the cleanup, he’s stayed within arm’s reach of his brother, never once turning his back.

“Elves do not need much sleep,” she says quietly. “Please rest.”

He considers, and then settles himself in a chair near Kili’s head. “You’ll wake me-”

“I will,” she promises, and he’s out even as she speaks. 

The room is bathed in an exhausted quiet. Beneath the soft crackle of the hearth, a gentle susurrus of water whispers outside. She wonders where Legolas is, and chides herself without success for not following. 

They’ve put a pair of folded trousers behind his head as a pillow, what’s left of the bedding draped over him like a shroud. She tugs the bench over and sits down beside him opposite his brother, tucking the blankets at his chin and smoothing the damp wisps of dark hair away from his face. Kili’s eyelids flutter in response. "Will you stay with me?" he asks hoarsely. 

“Yes.” She tentatively reaches for his groping hand, threading her fingers through his own. Mortals want such constant physical contact; even among her kind, the lesser, the unenlightened, touch isn’t something casually done. And yet the Dwarves seem to demand it, of each other and of everyone around them. As their fingers meet, he releases a slow breath and something inside her comes unclenched.

She could hold his hand forever. 

“Are you indeed Tauriel?” he whispers. 

“I am.” She retrieves a nearby cloth and dabs at the sweat on his forehead. The delirium is slowly breaking, but his skin is still far too warm.

“How have you come?”

“We are in pursuit of the Orcs.”

There’s something like a chuckle. “Only the Orcs?”

“You were lost in the river. I had no way to follow your path.”

“And yet you found me.”

“I am glad of it.”

A bit of smile tugs at his mouth. “It _is_ you.”

“You will live.”

Again, the sleepy smile. “Only if you will it.” There’s a long moment of calm silence, the nearest sound the rush of breath. She thinks he’s fallen asleep when he turns his head towards her. “Your hair...so like the fire moon. That’s what I thought, when first we met.”

In a sudden rush, she thinks that she could kiss him, taking the soft curve of his lips in her own to savor.

“You are so beautiful,” he says. “Surely you know.”

“Only if you will it,” she teases. 

“When I wake,” he says quietly, “tell me, will you still remain?”

She should take up her weapons and follow Legolas and the Orcs. She should abide by his wishes and aid him in the cause that was hers to kindle. She should not linger here. Battle is raging somewhere and she should be part of it.

And yet. 

She doesn't answer. She just tucks his hand beneath her chin. 

An interminable time later, she feels him stir. “...is there water?”

“Here.” She rises and returns with a small ceramic mug of steaming broth, supporting his head and bringing the cup to his cracked lips.

Almost immediately, he grimaces. “Is that _fish_?”

“This place is named Lake-town,” she says dryly.

“It’s not bad.” He takes another shaky, cautious sip. “When I said water, I didn’t realize I was getting all that swam in it.”

“I believe there are onions in there as well.”

He takes a longer draught and then drops back onto his makeshift pillow, utterly spent. “You’ve never heard of onion-fish?”

The curse on the runestone. “Only that they are said to bring tears to all who hunt them.”

He coughs a small laugh. There are no bars separating them now; she sets the mug aside and, after a moment of hesitation, takes his hand back up in her own. 

He immediately responds with weak, grateful pressure. “Did they make it?” It takes a moment to realize what he’s talking about, and his face falls. “You don’t know. What day is it? Please.”

“I can tell you by my own people’s reckoning.”

He gives a single shake of his head. “Tell me this, then: when did my uncle leave?”

She doesn’t know that, either. She doesn’t know how far ahead the Dwarves had been from the Orcs, and until right now, she hadn’t been certain they’d even left Lake-town. “They left you behind?”

“I am _begging_ you,” he says. “You’re an Elf - surely you must know when the moon was last full?”

“The afternoon just past,” she says. “It is still high.”

He relaxes, and is silent for so long she thinks he’s fallen back asleep. “Fili,” he says hoarsely, casting suddenly shining eyes to his brother. Fili shifts in the chair, but returns to snoring. “I stole this from him. He should be with the company.”

“He is here,” she says. “He seems to think otherwise.” 

“He is _wrong_.” The tears spill over, sliding from the corners of his eyes. “We grew up on tales of our fathers' halls. Our mother told us it was folly to come, but we would and will still follow Thorin wherever he chooses to go. I can curse myself and grieve, but Fili is the heir. By all rights, he should be by Thorin’s side.”

Fili is the heir. Kili is his brother. Thorin is their uncle. 

She has been stone-blind. Somehow, she never made the connection, but now she does. This isn’t just some Dwarf from the wild. He is a prince of his people, as much as Legolas is of hers.

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

“You will heal quickly,” she hears herself say. “You will join them soon.”

It seems to be enough. Between the broth and the conversation, he’s exhausted. He smiles over at her with half-lidded eyes, tears forgotten. “We will see it together,” he whispers, giving her hand one final, soft squeeze, and then he’s asleep. 

She has been less interested in stories and songs than perhaps she should be. She came to Thranduil’s care half-wild with grief and rage, and it was many, many years before she could sit with herself in quiet. She’s always preferred action to ballad, squirming when she should be still. She’s seen only the practical use of old tales, feeling the horror of Ungoliant only as it could relate to the spiders that crept into the kingdom. 

Lore is memory, and the only memory she wants is in the clear, silent light of the stars. 

She’s accepted at face value the declarations of her kin: spiders are filth, Orcs are evil, Dwarves are greedy. 

As she watches Kili sleep, she wonders at how wrong she’s been. 

The Dwarves are as Oli made them. As the smith loves his work so do his children, just as the children of Ilúvatar love the night sky. If the Elves cannot be blamed for the spiders that harry their borders, neither can the king under the mountain carry blame for the dragonfire at Erebor. 

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

Perhaps the greed is misnamed. Perhaps it’s an appetite, an insatiable desire to know all things, to feel them in the hand and learn their composition, taste and smell. The Dwarves covet gold, but deep underground there is no substance closer to the warmth of the sun. Her people revere the stars, adorning themselves with stones that echo their light and consider themselves the better. 

Are they not the same?

She reaches for the cloth in the basin nearby, giving it a quick wring with a single hand and gently bringing it to the sweat still glistening on his forehead and neck and to his drying tears.

His features are fine, but perhaps under their ridiculous mass of hair all Dwarves’ are. She’d teased Legolas that Kili was tall, but among his people he is a young scion of the oldest lineage and every feature shows it. 

He's a boy of his kind, barely out of adolescence, but she's not so old herself that she doesn't feel her blood stir. He is careless and kind, his grin easy and free, and in that brief moment of consciousness, he held her gaze as if she were Luthién herself. She wonders how her life would be if she chose him, if she took him and bound her life to his own. He is mortal and the time would be short, so painfully short, but she’s seen in the spark of his eyes that it would be vibrant. She would carry the ageless grief of the Elves, but the trade would be full of life and passion. 

She’s felt adrift for so long. She didn’t realize how much she’s needed something solid. 

Thranduil had told her not to give Legolas hope where there was none. It had been such a shock, something she’d never even considered, and when she’d told Legolas himself, he’d burst out laughing. “Truly?” he’d managed.

“Truly.”

“I _am_ fond of you,” he’d said. “But you are my sister in all but blood. Surely you must know that.”

Something relaxed deep inside her, a doubt planted by her king that she hadn’t known how to face. “Indeed, _mellon_.”

He’d looked at her in consternation. “You believed him.”

“I fear all that he could take from me.”

“Tauriel, he will take nothing from you. Besides,” Legolas said, his eyes dancing. “I am too tall and too handsome for _your_ taste.” 

She’d relented at that, both out of relief and a sudden flush at being caught in a truth even she hadn’t known. 

He missed nothing. “I _am_ ,” and then gleefully, “your secret is safe with me...and your Dwarf.”

“He is not my Dwarf!” she’d tried, but that was even _worse_.

“Count your chin hairs,” he’d laughed as he skipped ahead. “I hear they like their women bearded.”


	5. Chapter 5

Eventually, Fili yawns and stretches, immediately leaning toward his brother. 

“He took a little broth,” Tauriel says. “If he wakes again, have him drink as much as he can. He needs his strength.”

“Did he speak?”

“He asked about you.”

He nods. “How is he?”

“Feverish, but out of danger.” She doesn’t have any idea how long it will take. She just knows that the blackness has been burned away, and that’s enough. 

“We are hardy folk,” Fili says as if in agreement, but his face is still pinched with residual fear. “How did this happen? Was it poison?”

“Perhaps.” _Morgul_ in Sindarin merely means _black_. The ugly, swollen wound on Kili’s leg, the fingers of darkness crawling up his thigh - she can’t know if it was a noxious plant, some alchemical invention or malicious sorcery. “Whatever darkness lay within, it is gone now.”

“How?” Fili presses. There’s a note of command in his voice that she instinctively almost obeys. Fili is the heir, the future leader, imbued with strength and gravity made all the more intense by fear for his brother. 

“I cannot explain.”

He frowns, deeply unsatisfied, but Kili makes a soft noise, stirring but not waking, and Fili immediately focuses on his brother. “He _will_ recover.”

“He will.”

Fili reaches for the damp cloth and presses it to Kili’s forehead. “Are you here to take us back to Thranduil?” he asks bluntly.

“I am not here for Thranduil.”

That makes him pause. “Who are you here for, then?”

It takes everything she has not to betray herself by glancing down at Kili’s still form. “The Orcs.”

Fili spits a curse at the floor. “Are they dead?”

“Only those that were in this room.”

His knuckles go white against the deep blue of Kili’s tunic. “Less than a day behind us.”

“More,” she says. “Your kin took a boat. The Orcs will walk.”

“Small comfort.” He touches Kili’s forehead with the back of his hand, grimacing at the heat. “How long until he can travel?”

“You would know better than I.”

“What was it Oin asked for? Kingsfoil?” He glances at the kitchen. “Is there none left?”

“There was little to begin with. His wound took priority.”

“Well, he’s alive, at least.” Fili looks up at her. “Without you, he’d be dead. Even I can see that.”

“Fate allowed me to intervene. That’s all.”

There’s a moment of silence. “I knew something was wrong,” he finally says, so hushed even her Elven ears almost can’t hear. He takes up the cloth and presses it again to his brother’s forehead. “He was getting worse. We both knew it. He was scared. I was scared.” In the candlelight, his eyes are haunted. “I would have _carried_ him up that mountain if Thorin had let me,” he says fiercely. “We would have- he would have _died_ -” After a long, choking moment, he collects himself. “He’s my brother, Tauriel. Whatever mistrust exists between our kin, I owe you.”

The use of her name startles her and she can only blink, the silence becoming awkward. 

“Do you have family?” he asks.

 _Only what’s left in ashes_ , she almost says, and checks herself.

“It’s not for me to ask,” he finally says. “Forgive me.”

“It is nothing,” she assures him automatically, but there’s a hard lump in her throat. She could never love Kili even a fraction as much as his brother does, and the magnitude of this prince’s devotion is humbling. 

****

Tauriel sinks down on the far wall, tucking herself up into a meditative position, her back against the corner. She closes her eyes, but sleep eludes her.

She hears Kili wake, sounding small and fretful, and Fili’s rumbling, reassuring response. Through half-lidded eyes, she watches the brothers, the way Fili is impossibly gentle with his huge, muscular hands. There’s a pause in the conversation, a negotiation in low tones, and then Fili swings Kili’s arm across his shoulders and helps him upright. 

The journey down the stairs is absolutely out of the question, so a bucket is provided, Kili leaning against his brother’s neck; more muffled conversation, bantering tones amid the sound of falling water. Then, the drop back to the makeshift bed that is more a swoon than any controlled descent. There’s another negotiation, Fili’s voice firm and insistent, and then he’s tucking Kili back up against his shoulder, stabilizing the cup as the broth is drunk. After, Fili fusses, adding another blanket. 

What she sees most is how seamless they are together. They are each an extension of the other’s body. There’s no embarrassment, no resistance save for whatever Dwarvish pigheadedness that Kili can summon, and even that Fili accepts with fond tolerance.

What feels like mere moments later, a sound like rolling thunder builds in the distance and she starts awake. She must have truly slept, because at some point, someone dropped a blanket over her and for half a breath she thinks she’s wrapped in spider silk. She jumps to her feet, stumbling a little, hands on her knives until her head sorts out the threat. 

“It’s the dragon,” the boy, Bain, says in a fearful hush, peering out the door. 

“Could be a storm,” Oin says, lifting his ear trumpet to the night. The clouds have drawn in, smothering what light the moon had given. 

Fili glances at Tauriel, a terse invitation for commentary. “What do you think?”

She joins him at the threshold, taking a deep breath of the icy air to steady herself. The fog bank is impenetrable; visibility fades past the nearest buildings. “I cannot tell.”

Behind them, there’s a rustle of blankets and the gentle thunk of a wayward walnut hitting the floor. Fili is there immediately, bracing Kili as he tries to sit up. “Did someone say dragon?”

“Hush,” Tauriel says, more severe than she’d like. “You’ll wake the girls.”

Kili blinks and squints, swaying in place. “Dragon.”

“It could be anything,” Fili says firmly. 

“Do not coddle me,” Kili says hoarsely. “I know what they face. You-”

“Easy, lad. This isn’t on you.” Oin comes over and puts a hand to Kili’s forehead. “Bless me, the fever’s finally broken.”

“I feel hungover.”

“Try a bite to eat. That will set you right.”

Between the three of them, the Dwarves get Kili upright and ensconced in a chair amid a thick goat-fleece hide. More broth is presented, and when this is consumed, another bowl, this time with generous chunks of trout and carrot. 

Tauriel hovers on the edge of the room, one eye on the door and the other on the scene by the fire. Where is Legolas? Part of her assumed he’d return with news, but it’s been hours. He’d told her she couldn’t take thirty Orcs on her own, but even now that the pack’s been cleaved to half its size, it would be foolhardy for one Elf alone. 

Has she killed him? Has she traded the life of one prince for another? 

No, Legolas is smart. He’ll kill what he can from a distance, and when he can’t make a kill, he’ll sit and observe. Tauriel is the impulsive one, the one who runs off despite her king without plan or supplies. 

She glances over at Kili. Over the bowl tilted to his mouth, his eyes meet hers, and the softness in their brown depths brings warmth to the confusion in her chest. “Has she eaten?” she hears him ask Fili, who frowns. 

Within short minutes, she’s seated with a bowl of her own and a hunk of crusty bread. The food is simple but hearty, and she doesn’t realize how famished she is until her spoon hits the bottom of the bowl. Elves are known for their endurance; she’s never let herself get this drained before, and she wonders if the healing spell is the cause. Closing small wounds is one thing. Pulling malevolent blackness from a wound is entirely another. 

She hopes she never has to do it again. She’s not sure she could. 

When he’s done, Kili tries valiantly to stay awake, but ends up nodding off in his chair. Fili and Oin pull up stools nearby to have a whispered conference. Bain joins his sisters in their nest of blankets and Bofur snores in the corner, as he has since the minute Kili stopped screaming. 

Tauriel should sleep, too. Now that she has a belly full of food, her body is insistent on rest, but she can’t make herself lie back down. Instead, she slips outside, settling herself on the porch in restless watch. 

The fog shifts and moves in waves. Again, a roll of thunder curls across the lake, shaking dust off the rafters in its wake. She jumps to her feet, peering into the darkness. 

This time, she knows without a doubt it’s the roar of a furious dragon.

Thranduil has pontificated on many occasions the foul and violent nature of dragons, a favorite tirade second only to the one on the greed and deception of the Dwarves. She was first his ward, then his soldier, and now the captain of his guard and she knows her king’s whims and quarrels as well as anyone could. She’s listened to his dramatic accounts of fighting the wyrms of the north, and for the first time in her life, she finds herself grateful for his obsession. 

But the gratitude lasts less than a breath. The dragon is suddenly overhead, his shadow sweeping over her like a cloak. In the waterways, panic swells, parents crying for children as they hastily collect whatever will fit in their boats. 

This entire town is about to be engulfed in dragonfire.

“We have no time,” she announces, ducking back into the room, her heart hammering in her mouth. She grabs at the girls’ coats. “We must leave.”

Fili bodily lifts Kili from his chair. His brother sputters a little at being woken so abruptly, trying to shake him off. “I’m _fine_ , I can walk.” 

“We’re not leaving!” Bain exclaims. “Not without our father.”

“If you stay here, your sisters will die,” Tauriel snaps, bundling Tilda in her coat. “Is that what your father would want?”

As they scramble downstairs to the boat, the dragon circles again, dropping out of sight behind the ridgelines of the nearest houses. She’s suddenly terrified they won’t get out in time; the waterways are barely wide enough for two boats to pass each other, and now everyone is flooding out of their homes. “Quickly now!”

“Kili!” Fili says. “Come on!”

Kili is limping badly, but he’s on his feet and collapses into the boat just as Bofur and Fili push off. The dragon roars, passing overhead so closely the boat shudders from the sound. 

What does she know about dragons? She needs to breathe. She’s heard all of Thranduil’s stories, but now that the beast is overhead, everything seems puerile. Dragonhide is all but impossible to pierce. Dragons are greedy. Dragons-

She doesn’t have another moment to think of what dragons are, because suddenly there’s a wild, infernal roar and the leaning apothecary behind them explodes in splinters and flame, all the air rushing away in its wake. Her bow is useless. She-

Abruptly, a huge barge materialized out of the smoke, and no amount of skill can prevent collision. As the bargemen yell in indignation, the little boat creaks and leans, the gunwale bare inches above the water. She pushes hard against the barge’s slick sides, the others pushing with her. Down against the bottom, Kili whimpers.

They’re going to die. They are going to burn to death or drown. She leans over the girls-

Suddenly, she feels pressure on her legs. He’s holding her steady as the boat lists. He’s using his weight to counterbalance and he’s gripping her so tightly she’s never falling overboard. Their eyes meet in the flickering chaos, and the look he gives her burns hotter than the flying cinders around them. 

Once the boat is stable, she makes herself exhale, hoping he can’t feel her shaking. She can swim well, but the frigid water and its black depths yawn beneath her, a darkness so penetrating it seems like the soul of Morgoth himself. Despite herself, she reaches down at the same moment Kili reaches up, fingers tangling in the shadows. 

_Release him from death_ , but there isn’t athelas for this moment. All she can do is find a way through the smoke. 


	6. Chapter 6

Lake-town feels like the maw of a balrog. 

There’s too much of everything: fire roaring all around, the dragon somewhere up above, people screaming, overloaded boats lolling through the waterways as panicked occupants frantically pole toward the possibility of safety, freezing, ink-dark lake waiting below. She finds no air in her lungs, her chest gone breathless with the need to escape. “Hurry!” she hears herself yell, the word a sharp tremble that she doesn’t recognize.

“I _am_!” Bofur snaps. 

They have to get out. They have to get away. The dragon passes overhead and she has her bow up and ready, but her hands are shaking so badly her arrow goes wild. She’s suddenly forty again, a terrified child trapped in an adult’s body. 

It wasn’t a dragon back then. It was a pack of Orcs, or at least that’s what she’s been told. All she remembers is a white roar of flame and-

No. She can’t think about that. She’s not forty. She’s here in a boat with four Dwarves and three children of Men and she has to get all of them to safety. She breathes through her nose as she’s been taught, focusing on finding a clear path through the chaos. 

At her feet, Kili struggles to sit upright, pressing himself against her hip as she peers through the smoke, and she realizes this is exactly what happened to his home. Erebor and Dale were brought to ruin in exactly this way. She feels sick. Thranduil knew. He _knew_. He plucked her from tragedy and took her in, but he looked at the Dwarves and refused to do the same. 

“We will make it,” Kili murmurs, and at first she thinks it’s just a solitary prayer until she looks down and finds his eyes fixed on hers. “We will.”

If tears fall, she cannot entirely blame them on the smoke. 

Suddenly, Bain screams out, “Da!”

They all whirl and the girls take up the cry. “Da! Da!”

The bargeman is up on the belltower, balanced precariously amid the hellfire, straining against a huge longbow. He nocks an arrow and fires at the monster sweeping overhead. What happens is lost in the smoke.

“He hit it!” Kili exclaims. “He hit his target!”

“No,” Tauriel breathes. 

“He did! He hit his mark. I saw it!”

“His arrows cannot pierce its hide!” she snaps. Bard should be fleeing. They all should flee. Dragonscale is all but impervious; a few wooden arrows would barely leave a scratch. 

There’s a beat of silence, and then Bain is soaring up on a wayward winch. The boat erupts, the Dwarves frantically grabbing at empty air and the girls screaming his name. 

“Leave him!” She doesn’t recognize her own voice. “We cannot go back.”

They told her that once. They were stronger than she was. She doesn’t remember their faces. She only remembers being bodily carried, kicking and howling, away from flames that seemed to swallow the entire world.

She doesn’t remember much after that. 

****

These things are true: the dragon is dead. Tauriel guided the boat to open water, and none of them perished. 

Somehow, the sun rises. 

The first blush of dawn is a blur of survivors and turmult. She finds herself going back again and again into the icy lake, sodden up to her knees as she drags the living to the shore. She’s about to plunge back in when Sigrid grabs her arm. “We can’t find Da,” she says, her voice shaking. “He’s not here.”

Tauriel stares for a moment, cold and memory clouding her brain, until Tilda quavers, “Can you help us find him?”

So she follows the girls around the shore, scanning the disheveled and sobbing knots of people as the girls scream for their father. 

Amid the chaos, Kili calls her name. Only a few hours ago, he’d been dying in her arms, but although he’s still pale, he’s standing firm and strong again, as beautiful as he’d been when he called for a weapon against the spiders. The magic of the athelas is running its course, taking what was lost and bringing it home. 

His brother and the others are heaving a boat into the lake, determined to get to Erebor to join their brethren as soon as possible. She can’t blame them, not when she’s still keenly aware of the loss of her own kin, but there’s still an arc of anger: how dare they leave this beach, these people, all of them wet and injured and suffering from the monster _his kin_ ejected from its mountain den. 

“They are your people,” she says, more coldly than she intends. “You should go.” She makes herself turn away, every muscle in her body straining against the movement. 

“Come with me,” he says, two quick strides after her, and then when she hesitates, “I know how I feel. I am not afraid.” 

If she were cannier, she’d ask him to explain what he means, but the fierce expression in his eyes matches the fierce ache of her heart and she knows exactly what he’s saying. Night held insight for both of them, but where his provided certainty, she only feels inexplicably homeless.

“You make me feel alive,” he entreats. 

Perhaps Legolas was correct. Perhaps Dwarves do corrupt everything around them and she has fallen to their poison. She didn’t know she was unsatisfied until she saw his ready grin. She didn’t know her life was dull until this Dwarf prince burst into it, and she can’t even for a moment fathom that _he_ could feel the same about her. She’s Silvan, utterly pedestrian, ordinary and unworthy. If she’s been as close to Legolas as she is, that’s only through Thranduil’s capricious benevolence. 

Starlight. 

She wants this man. She wants to take his face in her hands and tilt it up to kiss. She wants to know what his arms feel like around her. She wants to tuck him against her in the cold night as the stars slide slowly overhead. She’s never been drawn to wishes of the flesh, but suddenly she understands. “I cannot,” she hears herself say. 

“Tauriel.” He reaches for her shoulder and draws her back to him, his eyes holding her like something infinitely precious. “ _Amr_ _âlim_ _ê_.”

The air leaves her lungs in a rush. “I don’t know what that means.” 

He smiles, a sweet, warm expression that she wants to drown in. "I think you do."

She can claim ignorance, but the word is spoken so softly, so gently, like a supplication or a prayer. She doesn’t know the meaning, but the intent is unmistakable - but is it?

She saved him. Of course he's grateful. 

And yet. His name is starlight. 

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

Could she even dare to hope? 

He's an heir to the throne of Durin. He's a second son but a son nonetheless. She could not give him children. She would be the one to truncate a long and proud line. 

Still. She’s seen the lines of his body sleek with water. She wonders what he'd look like, his head thrown back and his face brilliant with ecstasy. 

It warms her inside. 

She’s going to do it. She’s going to kiss him. She’s never kissed anyone, but she wants to kiss Kili right now on this beach, amid the crying and wailing of a shattered town, because she desperately needs something alive and good, and if she doesn’t kiss him now, she will lose the chance forever. 

At that moment, she hears the crunch of boots on gravel, and the opportunity dissolves. “Tauriel,” Legolas calls. “Take your leave of the Dwarf. You are needed elsewhere.” 

There’s anger in his tone. She didn’t follow when she should have - another betrayal to add to her list - and she doesn’t know how much favor she has left. It’s been three days since she left Thranduil’s halls; it feels like a hundred years. 

Kili scowls. She wants to explain that Legolas isn’t a rival, that her heart is in Kili’s broad hands and will never be possessed by anyone else, but her throat closes up. 

This may be the last time she sees him. He’s going with his kin to Erebor and she’s going where she’s bid, and even at the greatest times of peace trade between Elves and Dwarves was rare. She can’t imagine Thranduil treating with Thorin. Kili will take a place beside the king under the mountain. His brother will become king in time, and the bloodline will stretch out from father to son. 

Tauriel will return to the Woodland Realm and chase spiders until the end of Arda. Elves fall in love once in their infinite lives and she will never have more than this moment. She, who has no family beyond free-floating ash, will never have anyone to warm her nights. 

She can’t bear to watch him walk away, but all of a sudden, he’s back and snatching her hand, pressing into her palm something warm and smooth and familiar. 

The runestone. 

“Keep it,” he says fiercely, “as a promise.” And, conscious of Legolas’s continued gaze, he turns and jogs back to the boat, helping with the final heave to get it loose from the shore. 

Stunned, she can only clutch the stone, her chest too full to breathe. As the boat drifts away, he looks back, his face wracked and sad. 

This isn’t the mother’s reckless son, the lazy grin behind the bars of a cell. This is the tight, worried face of someone just barely alive, someone carrying a new and fresh grief. 

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

Tears spark in her eyes. It’s so _unfair_. She loves this man more desperately than her own heartbeat and his runestone is in her hand and now he’s floating away from her, unable to tear his eyes from hers. He’s making a promise - a promise to _her_ , a promise as pure as starlight. 

“Tauriel,” Legolas says quietly. 

She swallows hard, composing herself, and tucks the runestone in a pocket and turns to follow her prince. 


	7. Chapter 7

When Tauriel can speak, she catches up with Legolas as he moves away from the beach. “You saw something out there.” 

He frowns. “The Orc I pursued out of Lake-town. I know who he is.” He steps around a woman trying to persuade her toddler into a dry jacket. “Bolg, spawn of Azog the Defiler. A warg pack was waiting for him on the outskirts of Esgaroth. They fled into the north.” He shakes his head. “These Orcs were different from the others. They bore a mark I have not seen for a long time: the mark of Gundabad.”

Something cold slithers down her spine. “Gundabad?” It’s an Orc stronghold in the far north of the Misty Mountains, a fortress the Dwarves once tried to retake without success. 

He nods grimly. 

“My lord Legolas.” They turn in unison to see an Elven messenger on a tall, white horse. Lake-town refugees part at his passing with open-mouthed stares. “I bring word from your father.”

Tauriel’s stomach sinks. She’s carefully avoiding thinking of what punishment Thranduil will deliver. 

“You are to return to him immediately.”

She hears Legolas sigh, resigned. “Come, Tauriel.”

“My lord…” The messenger pauses. “...Tauriel is banished.”

The world suddenly disappears beneath her feet. “Banished?” she hears Legolas ask, as if from a great distance. Her pulse thunders in her ears, a heavy rush of panic.

Banished. 

She disobeyed her king. Thranduil is as merciless as he is generous. She knows this. She’s been protected by his favor so long part of her truly didn’t think he’d be _that_ angry with her, but he’d been furious with the Dwarves and furious at the Orcs, and her perceived failure with the spiders had already left him fuming. 

Banished. 

_Banished._

Her home, the only one she’s ever known. The place of refuge after the blur of horror and smoke, where she’d slowly come back to herself and then embraced what talents Ilúvatar had granted her. Thranduil had taken her in and raised her up, directing her path and bestowing his favor. She’d become agile and strong, a steadfast right hand to a king who valued absolute loyalty above all else. She had the confidence of those beneath her and, eventually, Legolas’s friendship.

This is the greed of the Dwarves. Yes, she’d been frustrated Thranduil hadn’t allowed her beyond his borders, but it wasn’t until the Orcs - following the Dwarves - had crossed into Mirkwood that something inside of her snapped. Perhaps she would have still followed them downriver, but she can’t lie to herself. Kili had snagged some tender, vital part of her and she’d been helpless to resist. She hadn’t know truly how lost she was until he was contorted in pain at her feet. In that moment, whatever rationalizations she’d made utterly disappeared.

She’s fallen in love with one of Thranduil’s sworn enemies and he’s done exactly what she deserved. That has to be the reason; merely leaving would not provoke so severe a response. She hadn’t even known she was in love, but Thranduil is nothing if not perceptive. Perhaps someone had mentioned her familiarity in the dungeons and he’d taken her reaction to the Orc as proof. 

He knows. How, it matters not. The outcome is undeniable.

“You may tell my father that if there is no place for Tauriel, there is no place for me,” Legolas snaps.

“Legolas,” she says hoarsely. “It is your king’s command-" 

“Yes, he is my king,” he replies vehemently, “but he does not command my heart.”

No. She _cannot_ take him down with her. He’s been her friend for centuries, as close to family as she could yet have, and if she’s ruined her own life, she cannot let him ruin his. She opens her mouth to protest, but he’s already checking himself for travel. “I ride north,” he says. “Will you come with me?”

“To where?” she says automatically.

“To Gundabad.” He frowns, face grim. “The Orcs found what they were looking for, although whether it is Erebor’s new freedom or the Dwarves themselves, I do not know. We must find out what they will do.”

****

Legolas demands the messenger’s horse - a mare named Calithil - with a single, sharp glance, and with a sigh, the messenger relinquishes the reins. It’s one more thing that will rankle Thranduil, but distantly, Tauriel supposes whatever disgrace she and Legolas have accrued cannot at this point get worse. 

With calm precision, Legolas removes the saddle and hefts it into the messenger’s arms. “Thank the king for his generosity,” he says. 

The messenger glares. 

“We ride fast and light,” Legolas says to Tauriel, adjusting the reins. “This horse can carry two easily enough. Will you come?”

She almost says she has nowhere else to go, but can’t. 

His face softens. “My father doesn’t mean it,” he says quietly. “He will forgive us.”

 _He will forgive you_ , she wants to say, but she’s ringing with shock and if she opens her mouth she’s going to cry. _I know him. He will not forgive me._

Her limbs are disconnected from her body, so Legolas pulls her up to ride behind him. 

She doesn’t know the path they take. As the sun slides down toward the horizon, she leans into Legolas’s back and lets the rolling gait of the horse numb her body. When Calithil finally slows to an exhausted walk, they stop for the night. The moon is a day past full - has it only been a day? Beyond it, the stars are bright pinpricks of sparkling ice. 

“Tauriel,” Legolas says, offering up a leaf-wrapped cake of lembas. When she doesn’t respond, he reaches over and deposits it in her hand. “Eat.”

Mechanically, she picks apart the wrapping and focuses on the bread. It’s familiar, thick and sweet, and if she were feeling anything, she’d probably be ravenous. 

“This is not about the Dwarves,” he says, coming to sit by her side. They’re on a small hillock in a dried floodplain. “We are here for the Orcs.”

She nods. 

“My father is wrong,” he says. “You were correct - we are part of this world and we need to protect it.”

Banished. Thranduil has unequivocally declared his position. She’s fallen on the wrong side of it. 

“Tauriel,” Legolas says again. “This is not for certain. He will listen to reason.”

She wants to argue. She wants to scream. She wants to rail against the walls and fences Thranduil has built, all the ugly ways he’s closed himself off from the world, but it doesn’t matter what she thinks. He controls Mirkwood with an iron fist and nothing can be done to change his mind. The more he’s questioned, the further in he digs his heels. He will not listen to reason because in his eyes, there is no reason for betrayal. 

It matters not who she’s trying to help. He forbade anyone to leave and she left anyway. Nothing she can say will help her case. 

Legolas is his only child, his beloved son. Tauriel is a foundling, protected only by Thranduil’s good grace. Without his permission, she has nothing. The woods and the streams of Mirkwood, the thick canopies where sunlight filters through to dance on small flying things: gone. Every beloved footpath, every twig and seed: forbidden. With one word, she has been sliced away from dense arboreal mystery, from dark and wormy loam, from bobbing springtime flowers.

Banished. 

Calithil is cropping grass nearby, delicately the hardy greens from the stony soil, and Tauriel leaves Legolas to go stand by her side. As a rule, she’s never liked horses - they’re not practical for forest travel and she’s much faster on foot - but suddenly, she needs the warm, steady bulk of another living creature. Kili will be in Erebor by now, reunited with his kin, welcomed back into their loving, enthusiastic embrace. 

He’s a prince. They would not cast him out. She takes the runestone from her pocket and clutches it to her heart.

She presses her face into the mare’s neck and starts to weep, huge, ugly sobs that start somewhere beneath her spine and tear their way out like a malevolent fetus. Breath is stolen by grief and mucus, her entire body turned inside-out and wrung dry. Calithil gives a sympathetic snort, turning to whuffle in Tauriel’s hair. She feels like she’s drowning, or dying, trapped and suffocating in the circumstances of the world. 

She doesn’t know how long she weeps. When she finally comes back to herself, swollen, damp and hiccuping, she goes and sits back beside Legolas, scrubbing at her eyes with a palm. 

“When did you last sleep, _mellon-nin_?” he asks quietly. 

She can’t remember. There was an hour or two in Lake-town last night - was it only last night? - but before that was a marathon run from Mirkwood. She’s suddenly aware that she is utterly exhausted, heartsick and spent. 

“Sleep,” says Legolas. “I’ll keep watch.”

She tries, but all she sees are smoke and flames and a single, stocky, beloved shadow slowly moving away. 

****

They start out before daybreak and by sunrise, the terrain turns jagged and burned. Fireglass gleams darkly under a sun clouded with dark smoke and haze, ugly hills like broken metal rising steep and sharp around them. These are the Grey Mountains, the Ered Mithrim, a place she’s only heard of in songs and tales. She thinks about the deep, tangled green of Mirkwood and her heart contracts painfully in her chest. 

Legolas seems to know exactly where to go. He guides the mare around the worst of the debris, following what could only charitably called a path. She wants to ask how he knows this land, but the air is acrid and breathing hurts. 

Eventually, he turns off the path and rides into a small hollow tucked against a sharp slope. The mare’s ears flick back and forth, eyes wide, her nostrils flaring. Legolas reaches down with a calming hand, whispering something into her ear, and for a moment, the quivering subsides. 

Tauriel wishes her own fear could be assuaged so easily. 

They leave the horse at the base of a hill, gingerly avoiding the spikes of slag and dully gleaming fireglass as they climb. Tauriel has never been anywhere so black and dead; it is unlike Mirkwood in every way, the opposite of everything good and alive and well. She feels the wrongness of it in her marrow, a sense like bitter fever or the harsh slip of steel against stone. 

At the top, Legolas crouches just below the crest and Tauriel huddles beside him. Beyond the valley below, a huge structure rises up, a collection of jagged vertical plates with edges like an Orc blade. In the filtered sunlight, the landscape is dull and bloody, the air smelling of smoke and bitter iron. 

“Gundabad,” she says hoarsely. It has to be. She feels the evil of it in the roots of her teeth, a hot, inescapable nausea. Her fingers go to the pocket with the runestone and its reassuring weight. “What lies beyond?”

“An old enemy,” Legolas says. “The ancient kingdom of Angmar.”

She knows that name. It’s one of the most infamous names in Elven lore, and she can’t suppress a shudder. Never once has she imagined she’d come here, to this place that twists like glowing chains around her throat. It is diseased, poisoned, perverted, held in smoldering captivity and denied the sweet release of death.

“This fortress was once its stronghold,” Legolas says. “It is where they kept their great armories, where they forged their weapons of war.”

“A light!” she hisses. “I saw a movement.”

They peer into the gloom, past the drifting clouds of noxious smoke. Somewhere in the fortress, a flame flickers and quickly dies. Something is alive in Angband - if alive is the word that can be used - and whatever it is, Tauriel and Legolas must venture in and find it. If she doubted the reason for their journey, she can doubt it no longer. 

“We wait for the cover of night,” Legolas says decisively, and then more quietly: “It is a fell place, Tauriel. In another age, our people waged war on those lands.”

Her mouth is dry. She can feel the weight of the slain in the air, the thousands of immortal beings laid out and bled dry into the ground. Everything smells of ash and primeval, metallic rot. 

Tauriel realizes Legolas is looking at her, his face somber in a way she’s never seen on her bright, sun-loving friend. “My mother died there.”

Her heart goes still in her chest.

“My father does not speak of it,” Legolas goes on. “There is no grave…no memory. Nothing.”

In the six hundred years she’s spent as Thranduil’s ward, not once has anyone mentioned Thranduil’s wife. By the time she was coherent enough to realize the absence, Tauriel understood instinctively that it was something never to be discussed. Thranduil is fierce, capricious, stark, easy to rage and distant as the moon. She suddenly realizes how much Legolas must have inherited from his mother, the warmth that comes as easily as a smile. 

Her vision goes hot and blurry. He knows exactly what this disclosure means to her. There’s no place of honor for her own family, nothing more than bare, scorched earth, probably gone to moss with the centuries. She has no tokens, no physical reminder; even the memories she carries are as blank as the color of the stars. 

This is why Legolas disobeyed his father. He was never truly following Tauriel. He pursues the Orcs because once a horde of such monsters tore apart his family. She knows _nothing_ of his mother, not her name, not her family, nor how she came to stand by Thranduil’s side. All she sees is a devoted son and the execution of a long-desired vengeance. 

Legolas could have left Tauriel in the ruin of Lake-town. This is bare fact. He’s fast enough and clever enough that he could have followed the Orcs himself. He could easily be here alone, but instead he chose to circle back and collect her instead. 

She wonders if she’d gone back to Thranduil when Legolas found her on the river, would her friend have then left anyway? There have been plenty of Orc incursions into Mirkwood before. 

No. He loves her and her flight was convenient. He could have pressed harder for their return. He chose not to. 

And what of Thranduil? A grieving king could rightly claim revenge. Instead, when he lost his queen to this awful place, he closed his borders to any who might approach. A wild howl of fury suddenly blooms in Tauriel’s chest. He knows exactly how much pain lies beyond Mirkwood and instead of extending a sympathetic hand, he’s chosen to turn away from those who most need help. 

Mirkwood is rich in resources. It would have been nothing to aid Thorin on his quest. The people of Lake-town did so without hesitation with far, far less. 

Thorin’s rage is not misplaced. Tauriel may be banished, but now she knows she will never be satisfied to return. 


	8. Chapter 8

The sun is melting into the horizon like an ugly ingot when Legolas finally speaks again. “Tauriel, my father-”

She knows exactly what he means to say and shakes her head. “I know what I’ve done. I accept my punishment.”

“Where will you go?”

“I know not, but I will make my way.”

“Would he take you in?” Legolas asks quietly. 

It cuts deeper than she wants, because a small kernel in her heart burns with irrational hope. It could never be. _It was just a dream_. “The Dwarves have no love of Elves,” she makes herself say.

“One Elf, perhaps.” 

He’s so kind and patient. He could very easily take his father’s side in this and ridicule her for what she’s done, but if he has any misgivings, he’s kept silent. Despite herself, tears spark in her eyes. _Do you think she could have loved me?_

_Amrâlimê._

Starlight. 

She wants to go to Kili. She wants to throw herself to her knees and tell him everything she’s thought and felt since the moment she saw him. She wants to scream that yes, he lives by her hand, but she lives by _his_ and she is the one who suddenly feels alive. She wants to take his face in her hands and kiss him until they’re both breathless, and whatever bound Luthién to Beren will be nothing against what she feels. 

Thranduil would never let his son pledge himself to a lowly Silvan Elf. Surely a son of Durin falls under the same constraint. She is here, back against a rock in a dead, blasted landscape with no home and no certainty. 

She has chosen her path. Even if it leads away from the one she loves, she will give her dying breath to save him. 

Legolas glances at the sky. “If we are going in, we should move now.”

They’re just standing when the air explodes in a cacophony of unearthly shrieks. Barely a breath later, the surge breaks over them, thousands of dense leathery bodies and slapping wings, bringing with them the noxious stench of guano and death. 

When it passes, Tauriel risks a glance over the rock that shields them. “They are swarming!” They’re moving in a dark cloud, swirling up and over the imposing gates of Gundabad like smoke on the wind. 

“Those bats are bred for only one thing,” Legolas says grimly. 

She knows in her soul but she makes herself ask. “For what?”

“For war.”

Somewhere down below, a horn blows, long and hollow, and when Tauriel peers over the edge again, she sees its source: a huge warg carrying an even bigger Orc, his body armor looking more like shrapnel than deliberate plate. Beside her, Legolas draws a quick breath. “Bolg.”

The Orc who invaded Mirkwood and shot Kili. An army is swelling up beneath him, an endless, rolling wave of black flickering with torchlight like malevolent stars. Bolg took the information he gleaned, went back to his lair and raised an army.

“This is a second force,” Legolas breathes. “Azog leads another. It must be. He would not send his son where he could go himself. Two Orc armies will converge on Erebor.”

Panic flashes through her body like lightning. The dragon is slain. The mountain is a place of vast wealth, coveted by more than the Dwarves, and this force spilling forth from fell Angband intends to claim it, along with other unknown forces already on their way. Whatever Legolas came to glean, whatever he suspected or feared, is already coming to pass. “We must warn the others!”

Legolas is already sliding down the embankment. “We may be too late. Hurry!” 

****

The mare is more than ready, straining against her tether with frantic eyes. “ _Noro lim_ , Calithil,” Legolas urges, but she needs no encouragement. 

It’s two days’ hard ride from Gundabad to Erebor and the mare flies as if possessed by the wind itself. They gallop through the night well into midday before she abruptly stops, lathered and panting. Tauriel has spent the day in a paroxysm of anxiety, her heart thundering in her ears like hoofbeats and the runestone clutched tightly in her hand. She’s painfully aware of the horizon, desperately trying not to blink lest she miss some distant sign of the oncoming army. 

“We cannot delay,” she says urgently as Legolas rubs the horse down. “We are losing ground.”

“We can run,” he says. “But then we will be heading into battle at a disadvantage. This is a great distance.”

Worry claws at her chest. As if reading her mind, Legolas puts a feather-light hand on her shoulder. “Tauriel. All is not yet lost.”

Tauriel has to believe him. She has no choice. This is so far from Mirkwood, so far from anything she’s ever known. Legolas has over two thousand more years of experience and eyes even more keen than a hawk. She has to rely on what he says. She has only ever felt this young and helpless once, and that memory is choked with ash. 

So she lets him take the lead, sitting on the bare, rocky ground and nibbling lembas. A heavy haze of clouds obscures all but the barest hint of moon, and although she lies awake most of the night searching, she cannot find a single star. 

****

The war has already come to Erebor. 

They can see the fighting from a league off, smoke billowing up into the clear, cold air. “We are late,” Legolas says hoarsely. “Azog’s forces outran us. But how?”

An unseen hand clamps around Tauriel’s throat. Every fear, every desperate hope - it converges all at once. Kili is here. Kili is a warrior. It’s not in his nature to run from a fight when he can charge into its middle. Weaponless, he’d still launched himself onto the ramparts at the river, reckless and fierce and more glorious than any star above.

The curve of his shoulders, the ease of the sword in his hand. _Do you think she could have loved me?_

He is hers. She wrenched the poison from his veins and claimed him in the face of death. If this is his fight, then it becomes hers. 

_I know how I feel. I am not afraid._

Something ignites inside her. He is a son of the line of Durin. She has no family, no lineage, nothing to offer him beside her bow and her blades and her heart, but those he has gladly and without reservation. 

“Mirkwood soldiers!” Legolas cries out, pointing. The distant figures come into focus, ugly black Orcs and the gilded Elves that swirl amid them. 

Thranduil came. Thranduil _came_. 

He did not come out of charity; she knows better than that. She knows there were gems in Erebor that he covets. Was that enough to drag him from his forest stronghold?

It matters not. He is here and that’s more than she could ask. 

“I do not see my father on the battlefield,” Legolas says, turning Calithil to the stone causeway. “If he is within the city, we must find him.” The mare, sensing the swell of battle before her, stretches out into a hard gallop.

Dale is in chaos. As soon as she has a line of sight, Tauriel brings an arrow to her cheek and lets it fly. Men and Orcs and Elves fight and convulse in the city streets, screaming war-cries that climb the walls in feral cacophony. 

“Gandalf!” Legolas shouts, pulling the horse up and nimbly sliding to his feet. Tauriel immediately follows, her weapon ready and drawn. The courtyard is small and dusted with snow; a few bodies lie in the immediate vicinity, but in this moment, the fight is removed to the nearby street, creating a small bubble of respite from the greater tumult. As the old wizard approaches, there is no time for greeting or preamble. “There is a second army. Bolg leads a force of Gundabad Orcs. They are almost upon us.”

“Gundabad!” The old wizard has ash in his beard and fury in his eyes. “That was their plan all along. Azog engages our forces and Bolg sweeps in from the north.”

“ _North_ ,” sputters- someone? Too small and beardless to be a Dwarf, but perhaps a human child? But he looks well-developed and more self-assured than a child. There isn’t time now - she can figure it out later. “ _Where_ exactly is the north?”

“Ravenhill,” Gandalf says, already walking purposefully back into the fray. 

“Ravenhill. Thorin’s up there.” The little man’s face goes still and blank, but then he shakes himself and determinedly strides after the wizard. “And Fili and Kili. They’re all up there.”

 _Kili_. 

More might be said, but Tauriel doesn’t hear it. Her heart is suddenly in her throat, her whole body frozen as she drags her eyes skyward. Out of the mist and smoke a peak rises, taller than Dale’s towers but still overshadowed by Erebor’s icy bulk. At its top, amid the ruins of an ancient Dwarf lookout, stands a collection of wooden insignia like bats vivisected and set to display. 

Kili is up there. Of course he is. He will be wherever Thorin is, and Thorin will aim for Bolg and his lieutenants. 

In the street, a cadre of Elf soldiers go by, weaving through the fight with their bows and blades drawn, effortless as dry leaves in their swift journey across the cobbles. But she also sees their corpses lying alone or in small groups, felled by Orc arrows and swords. Somewhere, Thranduil is here. 

At that moment, the clear, resonant sound of an Elven horn slices through the chaos. Thranduil _is_ here, but she knows that horn. She’s blown that horn, only once, when the spiders came too fast and thick for her small company. That is not a horn to inspire an army. 

It’s a horn calling for retreat. 

Without knowing what she’s going to do and a dizzying mix of fear and fury in her chest, she leaps after the sound. 

Gandalf is already there, hastening through the crowd and skidding in the dirty snow. “My lord!” he calls to the Elvenking, his voice like a great rockslide, elemental and deep. “Dispatch this force to Ravenhill. The Dwarves are about to be overrun. Thorin must be warned!”

“By all means, warn him,” Thranduil says coldly, and whatever hope has bloomed in Tauriel’s heart is dashed to ruin. He brushes past Gandalf. “I have spent enough Elvish blood in defense of the accursed land. No more.”

Everything hazes to white, and before she has time to reconsider, she steps out into the rubble-strewn street to plant herself firmly in his path. 

“You will go no further,” Tauriel says, white-cold rage surging through her body. The runestone is heavy and reassuring in her pocket. “You will not turn away. Not this time.”

“Get out of my way,” Thranduil snaps, and for a moment she falters. She’s already incurred his wrath and now she’s openly defying him. If she had any hope for redemption, it’s evaporated like a final breath. 

“The Dwarves will be slaughtered!”

“Yes, they will die,” he sneers. “Today, tomorrow...one year hence, a hundred years from now. What does it matter? They are mortal.”

Without any conscious thought, the bow is in her hands and the arrow is nocked. At her king, at her _king_ , the man who took her and protected her when she had nowhere else to go. 

Reckless. Beyond reckless. She’s horrified at herself. No Elf would dare draw a weapon at kin, but here she is. Perhaps she’s gone mad, she thinks distantly, poisoned to her marrow by the mere thought of a Dwarf.

What’s done cannot be undone. Not now. Tauriel is unravelling. Whatever sense she once had is being lost in quick, short breaths. She is a falling star, a phosphor-bright streak of flame and hubris across the sky, dying as she plummets. She cannot stop. 

Kili does what his kin bid. He follows Thorin without question. She - _she_ is the reckless one. Yes, he’s mortal, so very very mortal. The poison-iron smell of the morgul wound still clings to the back of her throat, the sound of his screams echoing in every distant cry. She cannot deny this truth. 

And yet. And _yet_. His name is Starlight.

“You think your life is worth so much more than theirs when you have no love in it!” she hears herself cry. A day, a year, all of eternity. He gave her a promise, one that’s as pure and as precious as any she’s ever been given. The Woodelves revere the stars, but Kili was right, the light is distant and cold compared to the light she has found in his face. Thranduil may have loved once, but in the long centuries since, he’s forgotten and withered. The poison of Mirkwood isn’t from dark forces beyond its borders; the poison of Mirkwood is _him_. “There is no love in _you_.” 

Thranduil took her in. He gave her a home. He’s favored her. She would be nothing without him, a foundling, an orphan, but that is past, an empty husk thrown amid the ugly words between them. 

She doesn’t know what she expects of him. She does not expect the blank, white fury on his face he stares at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “So this is how you manifest your treachery,” he says, his voice dangerously calm. “Would you now commit a kinslaying?”

Nausea surges forward and her arrow trembles. 

“I have been witness to far greater betrayals than you could ever commit,” Thranduil goes on, his eyes glittering. “Come, put your arrow to my throat.”

She almost does. For a fraction of a breath, she _wants_ to, but horror snaps her back.

“You think this is love?” he hisses. “Is that how you would justify yourself? A pretty word, delivered with a poison core.” With a single movement almost too fast for her to see, his blade flashes out and she’s suddenly left with two disparate hands and fragments of her bow. “What do _you_ know of love?” 

He’s always been a capricious master, but for the first time, she’s truly afraid of him, and doubly afraid of what she’s become that she’s provoked him so. 

“ _Nothing_!” Thranduil snarls. “What you feel for that Dwarf is not real.”

It _is_ real. It’s the most real thing she’s ever felt. All her days up to now are a soft-focus daydream, and in that moment in the dungeons when the runestone crossed her palm, she woke to a fierce and visceral reality. Whatever she was before is gone. 

_Do you think she could have loved me?_

“You think it is love?” her king repeats, bringing his blade up to her chin. “Are you ready to die for it?”

She is already dying for it. She has tasted it and will never be free. Elves love once in their infinite lives and she will carry this pain until the end of Arda. He could not have loved his wife and still remain so willfully ignorant to the plight of this world. Fury floods into her mouth. How dare he accuse her of betrayal? He brought his soldiers here and now he’s withdrawing, just when the need for them is greatest. He treats his aid as a clever temptation. 

The edge of his sword pricks the tender skin of her neck and she closes her eyes, steeling herself for a vicious attempt to escape. She cannot fail Kili. Nothing else matters.

“If you harm her,” Legolas suddenly growls, his sword pushing against his father’s. “I will join her in exile.” 

Turning to her in the stunned silence, he says quietly, “I will go with you.”

Her recklessness has destroyed both their lives. She herself is nothing more than ash that has not yet burned. Legolas, however - he may live, but he will never regain his father’s trust. 

If she had not lost all sense of reason, she would grieve. Instead, she accepts him as if he owes her his loyalty, unable to raise a single mote of gratitude from the seething tempest in her chest. She needs to get to Ravenhill. Nothing else matters, so with Legolas at her side, she runs. 


	9. Chapter 9

When this war is over - when Tauriel finds him and saves him - perhaps Kili will take her in. 

Perhaps it might work. 

She cannot be hidden in caverns of stone; she loves the sky too much for that. Kili would understand. They would go out into the clear night and count the infinite points of precious light. Every one would represent a year she has given up to future pain, but in that moment, her heart would be so full of joy the universe would yawn open, unbound and unbroken. 

She’d take him to lie in the summer grass at the edge of the forest. She would kiss him first, soft and sweet, until he laughed and greedily pulled her down into his arms. The air would be cool and clean against their skin, a counterpoint in the melody of heat they create together. Song and breath, breath and crescendo, until they shuddered together in the perfect, true union of souls. 

_Gilith._

She, who loves the stars above all else, would be with the star she loves best. 

****

If Tauriel can find Kili, she can warn him. Outside the city of Dale, there are fewer Elves and more Dwarves locked in combat with the Orcs. The battle seems trivial. The Dwarves are holding their own. Beyond carving her way through the chaos, she doesn’t think of stopping. 

Distantly, she realizes that she’s doing exactly what Thranduil has done: fire and blood surround her and yet she cannot focus on anything but a singular, selfish goal. 

She isn’t Thranduil. He withdrew his love. She embraces it. Her desire isn’t for a handful of cold, unfeeling gems; it’s for a man, warm and alive, someone who promised to return to her and said her name like she was something rare and precious. The runestone thumps in her pocket as she moves through the battle, a sensation against her chest like a second heartbeat. She has lost her bow - her bow was _broken_ \- but she has her blades and they flash like stars, great trails of black Orc blood spinning away in their wake. 

Tauriel and Legolas are making their way across a crumbling causeway blow Ravenhill when a shadow like smoke boils out of the frigid haze. Half a heartbeat later, the noise erupts, a wave of animal screams like pigs at slaughter. 

The bats. They’ve arrived. They flow down to the battlefield below, diving like hawks on prey. 

She can’t consider that she’s too late, but the hellish vanguard is irrefutable. She doesn’t know where she’s going, she only knows that she has to go up. As she tries to discern the quickest route, she catches a single glimpse of Kili on the high tower, his armor glinting golden and regal in the blowing snow and fog. 

_Starlight._

Her brain goes blank, her body launching forward on its own accord. At the end of the causeway, what’s left of the watchtower heaves up in fallen walls and broken stairs. She throws herself at the path, bloodying hands and knees and shins on her ascent. Any sense of pain is cast aside as unnecessary.

On the upper stories, the tower condenses into a tight warren of collapsed halls and shaky battlements. The wind is a physical force, an icy shriek that sears on its violent path through the ruins. Sounds of battle filter through, war-cries and the crush of steel on steel. 

Kili is somewhere above. Tauriel screams out his name but her voice is lost in the wind. Once, she hears his voice in an echo and with a thundering heart, she thinks maybe, just maybe, she’s found him. She skids around a corner right into a pack of Orcs. Their brief moment of confusion is their undoing. She twists through them easily, letting her blades carry her through the dance she knows best. 

She calls again and this time, he answers loud and clear. 

She knows where he is, but she still has to get to him. This far up, tower grows increasingly unsteady, each stone feeling like a single misstep will send everything careening down into the crags below. 

Down another hallway, she tumbles into another Orc pack. Wishing for arrows, Tauriel launches herself into the fray. These are no mere goblins; they are trueborn Orcs, each triple her size and full of brute fury. Every strike has to count, every movement precise. There is no room for error, no space for breath or weakness. 

It’s not a mistake that fells her. The Orc called Bolg, the commander of this army, the hated enemy, materializes from the shadows, reaching out with shocking speed. She crashes into a flight of stone steps, ribs snapping from the impact in sharp, staccato pain. 

_Starlight_. 

Gritting her teeth, she forces a deep inhale and crawls into the back of her mind as she throws herself forward. Slash, duck, slide, swivel - dark ribbons of flesh unfurl like vines, curling over and across the Orc’s chest and arms. Her blades catch against armor and send out sparks. He manages to snag one of her arms, violently dislocating her shoulder. Before she can react, one massive hand crushes her windpipe. 

Darkness surges into her vision, but - _Kili_. If Bolg is here, that means the army has already arrived. If Kili doesn’t know, he will soon. She’s homeless, an orphan, all semblance of belonging and comfort savagely ripped away. This is Erebor - if Kili has a chance of a home of his own, she will do whatever it takes to get him there. 

Rallying, she aims a kick at Bolg’s groin, using the momentum to twist away. All the times she’s thought she’s angry - at the world, at the dragon, at Thranduil - have been eclipsed with a fury so great her body becomes a conduit, rage narrowing her focus to only what’s at the edge of her blades. She is a being of righteous love, incandescent and terrible.

Perhaps that’s what kills her. If she were clearheaded, she might have understood this was not an opponent she could best. No matter how clever or agile, she can’t escape his meaty hold on skill alone. She would have felt limbs going bloodless. She might have held back her fury, and she would not have thrown herself at him with nothing but bared teeth and the promise of an uncertain future. 

Abruptly, she blinks against darkness and sees only but pebbles and dirty snow. She coughs and tastes blood instead of air. 

Somewhere above the ringing in her ears, she hears Kili roar and then the clang of steel on steel as sword hits armor. She isn’t sure the fight is going well. Bolg is a mountain of cruelty made flesh. Kili is favoring a leg and bleeding from a blow to the forehead.

If she had arrows, she could end this right now. Instead, she has two daggers and two arms that almost obey. Bolg has two eyes. She throws, hoping beyond hope they find their targets. 

A great roar of bloodlust explodes into pain like a pierced bellows. Bolg slumps forward, giving Kili enough time to wrench himself free. Through a sparkling haze, she sees him hit, and hit again, and again and again and again. Bolg’s head rolls from his shoulders and his body crashes down upon the ground like a felled tree. Kili dives after the head and slashes again and again, sparks against stone, and then he turns his pommel to the pulp with feral force and _howls._

The next thing Tauriel knows, he’s throwing himself down beside her and bundling her up in his arms. “Not you,” he chokes out, “not you. Not you, too.”

She forces her eyelids open, willing her eyes to focus but failing.

He makes a noise like a wounded hart and gently sets her back down. “You live?” he says hoarsely. He takes her head in his hands, peering into her eyes. “Tauriel, look at me. Look at me.”

She means to say something, but her mouth isn’t working and what comes out is a garbled cough. 

Kili looks around wildly. “You cannot stay here. Can you walk?”

She means to try, but everything swims and she finds herself pleasantly tucked against Kili’s chest. “You’ll be fine,” he’s saying, his voice cracking. “You’ll be fine.”

He’s warm. She can smell his sweat, and for one long moment, she lets her eyes close and just breathes in the beloved scent of him. This is everything she’s wanted. She’s ransomed her entire being for this single, perfect moment in his arms. 

“Tauriel,” he says, and he’s stripping his gloves off to put his bare hands on her face. His skin is warm, like the runestone she’d once held in her hand. She still has the runestone. She wonders if she can reach it. “ _Amrâlimê_ , please. _Please._ ”

“...I don’t know what that means,” she breathes. 

His hands are shaking. His voice is shaking. Tears stream down his face. “It means you are my love, Tauriel, stay with me. Please stay with me.”

“ _Gilith_ ,” she says. “That is your name.”

“Kili, yes, I’m Kili-”

“ _Gilith_ ,” she says again, sharpening the consonants. “Starlight. You...are my starlight.”

There’s a moment of absolute silence, and then he chokes out, “Am I losing you?”

She can’t lie, so instead she forces her eyes toward the ridge. “Azog is there...your uncle needs you.”

His eyes dart up and then back to hers, and his hands on her face tighten. “If I leave-”

She’s dying. She knows that now. There’s a crackle in her lungs, a creeping coldness in her chest, a body that she can no longer feel. Legs that are no longer her own. Somehow, the runestone is in her hand and she presses it against his chest. “Here is my promise.”

He stares at her, and then his lips are on his. Her kin deride the greed of the Dwarves, but she suddenly understands: a wild, desperate starvation that cannot be controlled and cannot be contained. As he curls over her in the snow, she is greedy for another word, another breath, anything, _anything_ that she can take and hoard in her heart. This should not be the first time she kisses him and more than that, it should not be the last. Dwarves are mortal, but she wanted those centuries. 

“Keep it,” he says desperately. “Tauriel, I-”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” she says. The word is perfect in her mouth, soft and round, soft as the lovers they will never be. “Your uncle needs you.”

“ _I_ need _you_ ,” he chokes out. “Fili - Fili is _dead_. Fili is dead. _Fili is dead_.” The words are their own fierce rush, and he buries his face in her shoulder and screams. 

All she can do is pull his head close, sinking her fingers into the damp and matted mess of his hair. 

“I cannot lose you,” he chokes out. “I cannot lose you, too.” And then he’s kissing her again, lips, forehead, chin, cheeks, all feverish and fierce. “Tell me what to do. You saved me. Tell me how.”

Down the hall, she can hear the skitter of goblin feet. “Give me my blades.”

“ _No_ -”

“Go to your uncle. I will hold them off.”

Kili follows his kin without question. If he is reckless, it’s only out of love. She sees the war on his face, the desperation and fear, the fury and conviction. 

Once, Kili had grinned up at Tauriel with impish pride. Later, he had held her eyes with a tenderness she didn’t think was possible. Now, he’s curled around her with his forehead pressed against hers, his whole body heaving with sobs that he’s trying desperately to hold back.

 _Gilith_. “Give me my blades.”

Kili does, but at the last moment pulls them back. “I will see you again.”

His face. A handful of days ago, she didn’t know he existed and now, his face is dearer to her than her own heartbeat. Thranduil said this wasn’t real, but he was wrong. 

“Yes,” she says. It’s a lie and he knows it. She can see it in his face, but his uncle needs him and he has to go. 

“I will find you,” he says hoarsely. “I will.”

“ _Amrâlimê_ ,” she says. 

He closes his eyes and kisses her forehead, then gives her one last, long, deep kiss before rising to his feet. 

“Go,” she says. “You must.”

His eyes spill over, tears cutting trails through the blood and grime on his face. He swallows, glances toward the sky and then back at her. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he hefts his sword and charges back up the stairs. 

Behind the skittering goblins, there’s a deeper rumble, the unmistakable stagger of a troll. This is her last kill. She has to make it count. 

_Starlight_. 

Tauriel will not face long centuries of grief. She will savor these last few moments with the joyous taste of him in her mouth and the deep, precious scent of him in her throat. 

When the troll is close, she summons everything she has left and throws. Her daggers go deep into its brain. It slams into the ground. The walls are already weak with age and weather; it takes nothing for them to crumble, and nothing for her to crumble along with them. 

****

There’s a silence between heartbeats. The blood still flows, pushed and tugged to its next destination, but there is quiet, a rest, a counterpoint to the messy cacophony of living tissue.

The silence becomes a missed step, a stumble in cadence, an absence like water as it disappears into deep moss. Relief comes, soft wind through spring blossoms, and beneath it, like a slowly moving stream, a calm born of fulfilled purpose. 

There are two breaths even the immortals hold sacred. There was the first, and this is the last. 


End file.
